I love Thai food the way most people around the world love Chinese food. For someone who picked up the Thai taste in her 40s, I should be adjudged someone who already knew the tastes of really good food or made a subjective decision based on one particular spicy Thai dish before coming to a conclusion. One thing that I do know is that I have never come across a bland Thai dish, the type the Thai Delicious Committee is trying to force to improve or run out of business, perhaps.

Why do I love Thai more than Chinese food? It’s really simple: one, it’s really spicy the way my mother-in-law used to like her food, a taste I picked up because the food I grew up with was towards bland – sorry, Mothers – and two, in spite of several tries, I never quite got the hang of preparing the curry. It’s either the paste’s consistency (which can be picked up on the international aisle of most US grocery stores) did not gel well with the coconut cream or it just did not taste like my friend’s special for me, for example, fried catfish in hot curry sauce.

Meanwhile, even though I’m not a born cook, there are quite a few Chinese dishes that I can concoct very well, thanks to a Chinese food tome presented to me as a going-away gift in ’75 by – ironically – a Thai friend, Marlin from my World Bank Go-fer days in the 70s. We all used to love Chinese back then but I do not remember her ever introducing us to Thai cuisine; Marlin had spent most of her life in the States. Could it be that the simplicity of Chinese cuisine eventually made it less attractive for me once I discovered Thai?

I had a Thai friend who runs a Thai restaurant (not one of those that a new Thai food nationalism is trying to sort of isolate nor would she have any need for the new “‘e-delicious machine’” that “will check chemical composition of dishes against standards set by human experts”.) Her restaurant at Henderson, NV (part of Vegas metro) was a comfortable food place for me; my spouse and I took our seats and we just waited for whatever caught her fancy to prepare for us!

Now, I think the Thais want to take their national dishes to the height and popularity that their cousin’s cuisine, Chinese food, has attained around the world. They’ve incorporated high tech into their plans to realize this goal.

Tọla

Read all about the robotic food taster that will measure the quality of Thai Food through the link: